While most Kosovo Albanians celebrate an end to
the war, the agony goes on for more than 2,000
Kosovo Albanians held in Serbian jails.

By Laura Rozen in Pristina

Albin Kurti knew he was in danger. The 24-year-
old student activist took precautions, varying
his route to the unheated brick offices of the
independent student union of Pristina's
underground university where he was co-president,
speaking in code on his mobile phone, and
frequently sleeping away from home. But he always
suspected that if the Serbian security service
wanted to get him, it would.

He was right. Kurti, his father, Zaim, and
brothers, Arianit and Taulant, were arrested by
Serbian special police in the Pristina home where
they were hiding on April 21. His father and
brothers were eventually released after being
beaten. But Albin, after serving time in the
Lipjan prison, was moved to a prison in the
Serbian city of Krusevac, where it is reported he
is currently being held.

Albin Kurti made a powerful impression on the
dozens of human rights' activists, diplomats,
students and journalists he met. His long dark
dreadlocks, gentle smile, and treasured library
of books by Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and
the Carnegie Commission on International Peace
reflected his passionate and articulate
commitment to pacifism and social justice. But
his pacifism and personal gentleness were
challenged by the conflict overtaking Kosovo.

In the summer of 1998, the war raging in
Kosovo's rural Drenica and western regions was
drawing Kurti closer--not without some
reservations--to the political wing of the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), then led by the long-time
dissident politician Adem Demaci. Fluent in
English, Kurti served as Demaci's spokesman, and
by extension, as spokesman for the KLA's
political wing.

By the end of the failed Rambouillet peace
talks, Demaci was replaced as KLA political
leader by 30-year-old Hashim Thaci, who in his
student days in the early 1990s had also led the
underground university's anti-Milosevic protests.
But by the end of Rambouillet, Serbian forces
were already moving reinforcements into place in
Kosovo, and subtleties and job titles no longer
mattered. Kurti's name was on a list of key
Albanians to be detained.

Another name on the Serbs' list was that of
pediatrician and human rights' activist Flora
Brovina. Like Kurti, Brovina was arrested on
April 21, by Serbian special police who, her
neighbours say, were waiting outside Brovina's
Pristina home when she came back from her
parents' house. A friend says that Brovina spent
the war running an emergency medical centre for
displaced people and women in labour. Brovina is
now believed to be held in a prison in Pozarevac,
Serbia. Her son Nick Brovina says she has become
partially paralysed as a result of her treatment.

Brovina and Kurti are two of more than 2,270
Kosovo Albanians held as political prisoners in
Serbia, according to the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC). Another 1,500 Kosovo
Albanians are still missing after the conflict,
including 800 from the south-western Kosovo town
of Djakovica (Gjakova) alone. Many of their
families suspect they are being held in Serbian
jails.

For the families of Kosovo's imprisoned and
missing, the agony of the Kosovo war goes on.
Crowds of relatives gather outside the UN
headquarters in Pristina almost daily, to appeal
for help in freeing their loved ones. But
watching their lonely vigil outside the UN
offices, it often seems that no one is listening
to their pleas.

Officials in international agencies say that
they are aware of the problem and are working on
it. But to date they have failed to explain to
the relatives what exactly they are doing or how
long they will have to wait.

Brovina's friend, fellow doctor and human rights
activist, Vjosa Dobruna, head of Kosovo's Centre
for Protection of Women and Children, has been
working to get international officials to take up
the case of Brovina and the thousands of other
Kosovo Albanians transported out of Kosovo as
Serbian forces were withdrawing and taken to
Serbian prisons.

"I dont think there are any avenues I haven't
pursued," Dobruna said in a telephone interview,
en route from Washington to Pristina. "I have
talked to US Under-Secretary for Human Rights
Harold Koh and NATO secretary general Javier
Solana. I have contacted all the agencies, the
ICRC, Human Rights Watch, for months since the
beginning."

Dobruna and other human rights' activists are
angry that international officials signed a peace
agreement with Belgrade that failed to grant
amnesty to the thousands of Kosovo Albanians
imprisoned by the Serbs for political reasons--a
clause included (but not honoured) in last
October's Holbrooke-Milosevic cease-fire
agreement. But in the past week there has been
some progress. Three Kosovo Albanian lawyers were
able to meet with several of the political
prisoners in Serbian jails. The lawyers report
that conditions for the prisoners, who have been
denied contact with their families, are "bad",
but not as brutally terrible as those under which
Serbian forces held Kosovo Albanian prisoners
during the conflict.

Natasa Kandic, head of the Humanitarian Law
Centre in Belgrade, organised the lawyers' visits.

"My lawyers from Kosovo have succeeded in
tracking and finding some 30 to 35 Kosovo
Albanians from the missing list in the prisons.
All of them are from Djakovica and were arrested
in April and May," Kandic said by telephone from
Belgrade. "It is good news. But the list of the
missing is long. From Djakovica alone, some 800
are missing. And I believe that maybe we shall
find more people from the missing list in the
prisons."

In addition to the 1,500 missing Kosovo
Albanians, and 2,270 in Serbian jails, the
Humanitarian Law Centre has complied a list of
more than 250 missing Kosovo Serbs. Despite the
fact that no provisions were made for the missing
and imprisoned in the Military Technical
Agreement signed between NATO and the Yugoslav
Army at Kumanova, Macedonia, Kandic believes the
Serbian authorities may be willing to negotiate a
post-war deal.

"Based on some rumours here, I believe that the
Serbian authorities will say, the people arrested
during the NATO bombing, should have the status
of prisoners of war. But after the arrival of
KFOR, the missing Serbs and Romas and Albanians
should have the status of disappeared. I think
the Serbian authorities and the UN civil
administration should begin to clarify now the
issue of prisoners and missing persons."

What leverage the international authorities have
over the Belgrade government to negotiate the
release of the imprisoned Kosovo Albanians is
unclear. But Kandic said the fate of those
missing and not in Serbian prison is worse.

"You know, everybody in Serbian prisons is good
news for their relatives," Kandic said. "Because,
unfortunately, those on the missing lists who are
not in Serbian prisons, are probably dead."

Laura Rozen has been covering the Balkans for
English-language media since 1996.